
Pass f^'tSJ 
Book 1 



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/\braham lincoln. 



^ILECTUREie 

BY 

CHARLES HALSEY MOORE, 

OF PLATTSBURCH, N. Y. 



Unroln i ana 






ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



The Boy, the Man and the President, 



Dk. Johnson commences his history of Rasselas, Prince 
ol Abyssinia by what is declared by critics to be without 
exception the most complete sentence in the English 
language as follows : "Ye who listen with credulity to the 
whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms 
of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of 
youth, and that the deficiencies of the presentjday will be 
supplied by the morrow, attend to'the history of Rasselas, 
Prince of Abyssinia." 

It is not, my friends, to the excellencies of Dr. Johnson's 
literary style, nor to the history of his Prince to which I 
wish to call your attention, but to the story of a greater 
than a prince, the story of Abraham Lincoln, One of the 
most interesting, fascinating and I almost said astonishing 
stories of human life is condensed in the words, a life of 
Abraham Lincoln. The sound of his name brings back to us 
the days of early Illinois; and the then almost unknown great 
West; the struggles of freedom against slavery, and slave 
laws; the boom of the cannon at Sumpter; the clanking of 
shackles as they fell from the limbs of millions of human 
beings freed by a^stroke of his pen. The trumpet of vic- 
tory at Appomattox; the shot of the assassin Booth, and 
the wails of a mourning nation more than a quarter of a 
century ago at the death bed of this Abraham Lincoln. 
His influence Julian says is "wider than the Republic; a 
unique man without ancestor or si'ccehsoi." 



2 

[Read from Stoddard's Life of Lincoln.] 

"That's the place, Abe. You was born thar." 

" 'Taint much of a place to be born in — its a heap meaner'n 
the place we'r alivin' in now." 

A man of little over the middle heii^ht, broad shouldered, 
powerfully built, and somewhat rough looking, leaned upon 
a long rifle and gazed at a forlorn looking log house, not 
far from the road side, in a wretched, ill tended corn field. 
At his side was a slim overgrown boy of seven years who 
might easily have passed for three years older. The growth 
which had come to him so fast was indicated — not only by 
his size, but by the queer, thoughtful expression of his 
strongl}' marked, sunburned face. It was full of boyish 
fun, to recklessness, and yet wore an unchildlike look of 
sadness also, as if the kind of human life into which he had 
been born was already teaching him its lessons and leaving 
upon him its forever indelible marks. 

"They call it 'Rock Spring Farm,'" remarked his father. 

"Do they ? Wall I remember the spring well enough 
and the rocks too, but pop, whar's the farm ?" 

"All around, hereaway. It was the first piece of land I 
ever owned, such as it was. I didn't own it very much 
nuther." He did not look like a man who had ever owned 
much of land or anything else. He was barefooted, and 
his patched homespun trousers barely reached his ankles; 
but that was more than could be said of Abe's. On his 
head too was a coonskin cap, while his odd looking son wore 
nothing above his uncombed shock ot dark hair. A 
greasy buckskin shirt completed the outer garments of Tom 
Lincoln, with a powder horn and bullet pouch slung over 
his shoulders in lieu of all ornament. His leather waist- 
belt marked yet one more difference in the apparel of the 
two, as Abe's left shoulder was crossed by the one suspen- 
der with which his trousers were tied up, and it met no 
. buttons ,at its Jower^^njis.; 



^/ 



3 

"Pop, do you reckon you'll find anything neaner'n that 
over in Injianny ?" 

"I'll tell ye when I git back. We'd best be movin' now, 
I want to get out of Kaintucky ; I jest do." 

"Wall pop, I don't know's I keer much whar we go to." 

Such are the opening pages of Stoddard's Life of Lincoln, 
as I have read them to you because I believe they give 
us all a truer idea of the real beginning of Abraham 
Lincoln's boy lite than any of the many histories we have 
of him. 

How strange the mutations of time, how amazing the 
history of individuals, and of nations. Forty five years 
from that day, and spot, this tall, raw-boned lad, this 
angular, tow-headed, Kentucky boy, his gait shambling, his 
figure ungainly, walked, a man marked among men, in the 
whole Nation, as he had been in his own neighberhood. A 
man upon whose now more than ever rugged face and 
form all the civilized world was looking — this man walked 
into the White House, as its master, the President of the 
mightiest of Republics. 

From the wretched log hut to the Nation's palace; from 
from the ugly, ill kept, poverty stricken corn field at Roll- 
ing Forks to the battle fields of the Republic; from the 
nondescript uniform of a one suspendered shoulder and 
buttonless trousers to the full uniform of the foremost 
citizen of the land, as the Commander in Chief of all its 
armies and navies. 

Here and there amid the ruins of half buried cities there 
arises some bolder ruin, some taller tower, and some more 
shapely shaft from the ruin strewed plain, as landmarks to 
tell the traveler that here was once a Thebes or a Tyre, but 
the majority of the dwellings, the temples, the towers have 
disappeared from the earth as if those cities had not been. 
So it is with nations. Of all the myriads who have peopled 
the earth how few the names which have been preserved in 



4 

history or whose memories even survive the universal 
wreck of time. The masses of men and women have come 
and gone hke the leaves of the forest, with the summer's sun 
and winter's storm, the old and the young, the grave and 
the gay, the dull tongued and the eloquent, the rich and 
the poor, the powerful and the weak, the infidel and the 
believer all have fled away, like the morning clouds before 
the rising sun, and their footprints once imprinted on the 
shores of time are erased by the ebb and flow of the human 
tide. But upon this historic shore here and there is left a 
footstep, there remains a name, there arises a tower which 
was not destroyed in the ebb and flow of that tide, and 
there are a few names likewise which have never and never 
will die, who are types of the nation to which they be- 
longed, and whose lives are the history of the nation 
during the period in which they lived. Nineveh has her 
iNimrod, Babylon her Nebuchednezzar, Jerusalem her 
David, Rome her Caesar, France her Napoleon, England 
her Alfred the Great, America her Washington, her 
Lincoln. Yet out of the many how few names are these. 
161 times has the earth been populated and depopu- 
lated, 54 times has the human tide ebbed and flowed on 
these shores of time since the time of the Christ, and yet 
how few the names surviving. The many have disappeared. 
What number of the 25 millions alive in the United States 
in 1860, when Mr. Lincoln was elected still survive? Mr. 
Lincoln well pictured this and his sense of its truth, in that 
poem, "O, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?" 
and which I will read to you in full, both on account of its 
own intrinsic merit, and because it was his favorite poem. 

"OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD. 

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 
Like a swift-lieeting meteor, a fast flying cloud. 
A fiash of the lightning, a break of the wave, 
Man passes from life to his rest in the grave. 



The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade. 
Be scattered around around and together be laid; 
And the young and the old, and the low and the high 
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. 

The infant a mother attended and loved, 
The mother that infant's affection who proved; 
The husband that mother and infant who blessed. 
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest. 

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, 
Shone beauty and pleasure, her triumphs are by; 
And the memory of those who loved her and praised, 
Are alike from the minds of the living erased. 

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne. 
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn; 
The eye of the craven, the heart of the brave, 
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave. 

The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap, 
The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep; 
The beggar who wandered in search of his bread, 
Have faded away like the grass that we tread. 

The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven; 
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven; 
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, 
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. 

So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed, 
That withers away to let others succeed ; 
So the multitude comes, even those we behold, 
To repeat every tale that has often been told. 

For we are the same as our fathers have been; 
We see the same sights our fathers have seen; 
We drink the same streams we view the same sun. 
And run the same course that our fathers have run. 

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think, 
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink. 
To the life we are clinging they also would cling; 
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing. 

They loved, but the story we cannot unfold, 
They scorned but the heart of the haughty is cold, 
They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come, 
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb. 



6 

They died, aye, they died; we things that are now, 
That walk on the turf that lies over their brow, 
And make in their dwellings a transient abode, 
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road. 

Yea ! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, 
We mingle together in sunshine and rain; 
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge 
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. 

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, 
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death. 
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud — 
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? 

Tlie authorship of this poem has been made known since 
this pnbHcation in the Evening Post. It was written by 
Wilham Knox, a young Scotchman, a contemporary of Sir 
Walter Scott. He died in Edinburgh in 1825 at the age 
of 36. 

This was Mr. Lincohi's favorite poem. Taken from 
Carpenter's Inner Life of Lincoln. 

Mr. Lincoln's name has faded from history as a political 
partisan, but like faded writing exposed to the heat, it has 
come out strong and luminous in the light of history, 
as Lincoln, the American Statesman and Emancipator. 
Years have but begun to show the world what he really was. 
In his day, to some he went too slow, in the work he had 
to do; to others he was too advanced. To the radical 
abolitionist of that day he was deemed semi-pro-slavery. 
To the "Constitution as it was" citizen of that day he was 
regarded as almost an anarchist. In his own political 
party, men were found who freely denounced both him and 
his measures, and his political opponents did not liesitate to 
dignify him by the name of "ape and gorilla." To the 
enemies of the Federal Government he was all and more 
than all these. The newspapers of that day teem with epi- 
thets of Mr. Lincoln, which if they were uttered to-day 
would speedily cause the type of the paper which printed 
them to be "knocked into pi," by an indignant and justly 



7 

incensed populace. The lapse of years and historical re- 
search, have shown how unjust their opinions, how uncalled 
for their epithets. As his physical frame towered above 
his fellows so his mind and soul, and to-day those who vili- 
fied and defamed him are alike with some who praised, 
known only to history, because they were, in the environ- 
ments of that day brought into contact with him, and 
revolved like lesser suns around a p^reater, he the great 
central figure, and living actor of them all — Abraham 
Lincoln. The period at which Mr. Lincoln was called 
upon to preside over the affairs of this nation was a critical 
one. The Federal form of government was looked upon 
by statesmen of all nations, including some of our own, as 
an experiment, and not only that, but as an untried experi- 
ment, something unique, original, and if you please almost 
an eccentric experiment, by a zealous and inexperienced 
people, along lines hitherto untried in the formation of a 
government. For 6000 years forms of popular government 
had been tried, to result only in the inevitable Dictator, 
King or Emperor. Where the people failed, the few suc- 
ceeded. More than this, the test of its strength always 
came, and as often the people's fabric collapsed, and 
tumbled to the ground, so that the monarchies of the old 
world prophesied a like fate for ours. They called the 
Union a rope of sand, a travesty upon the true idea of a 
government; a political paradox; a union of conflicting in- 
terests, whose life blood was carried along by the current 
of disunion; an integer whose only end was disintegration; 
and a national life which only meant dissolution of that 
body politic. A voluntary United States could result in 
but a voluntary Disunited States whenever a single State 
saw fit to withdraw. The test so long prophesied had 
come ; the grains of the rope of sand were slipping 
away;'^the units of the integer had begun to subtract 
themselves ; disunion for union ; secession for adhesion 
was the shibboleth as well as the war cry. To stop this 



process of dissolution was Mr. Lincoln's task. Even before 
he could constitutionally begin his task, and be inaugurated 
the government of which he was elected head, had well 
nigh ceased to exist, and when Mr. Lincoln arrived in 
Washington there was but the outward show or semblanct 
of submission to the authority of the United States. 
Traitors were every where, and nothing, except the bold 
front of a few sturdy patriots like Dix and Scott, prevented 
the Capital from falling into their hands. Mr. Lincoln 
well understood the task before him, and on Feb. 11th, 
1861, on leaving Springfield, 111., for Washington said, 
"Friends, no one who has never been placed in a like po- 
sition can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the 
oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a 
quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during 
all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your 
hands. Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an 
old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed. 
Here all my children were born and here one of them lies 
buried. To you, dear friends, I owe all that 1 have, all 
that I am. All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd 
now upon my mind. To-day I leave you. I go to assume 
a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Wash- 
ington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be 
with and assist me I shall fail; but if the same omniscient 
mind and Almighty arm that directed and protected him 
shall guide and support me, I shall not fail, I shall succeed. 
Let us pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us 
now. To Him I commend you all. Permit me to ask 
that, with equal security and faith, you will invoke His 
wisdom and guidance for me. With these few words I 
must leave you for how long I know not. Friends, one 
and all, I must bid you an affectionate farewell.' The rail- 
way train bore him away and they saw his face no more. 
[From Stoddard's Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 202-3.] 

It is worthy of noJte at this point, how entirely every 



9 

trace of skepticism concerning God and his active provi- 
dence in hnman affairs had vanished from the mind of Mr, 
Lincoln. The fact should also be noted that he had not 
enrolled himself as a member of any one sect, or declared 
his unquestioning acceptance of any one creed, selected 
from among the many formulas presented by professional 
theologians. The first fact becomes of greater importance, 
and the second of less and less henceforward. The man 
who could not lie, and did not know how to be a hypocrite 
publicly and before the world declared his simple faith, 
both then and afterwards. So doing, he continually called 
upon his countrymen to join him in acts of repentance, for- 
giveness, prayer, thanksgiving, hope, trust; reassuring them 
in God's when their own hearts sank and their own faith 
failed. He waded through deep waters and found God 
with him there, and he reverently said so. It is too late 
now rationally to accuse Abraham Lincoln of having acted 
and uttered a solemn lie." 

[Stoddard's Life, page 203.] 

The fame of great men is not measured by the years 
they lived, l)ut by their acts. 50 years is but a day and a 
day as 50 years. General Grant's great fame was won in 
less than two short years, Mr. Lincoln's in five, and began 
after he was over the half century of his age. Such men's 
bodies die but their deeds are immortal, and men think as 
reading of them that their age and fame must have co- 
existed, but their contemporaries know better. An old 
farmer acquaintance of the President expressed the feeling 
exactly, when he was told of the nomination of Mr. Lincoln 
for the Presidency: "Shucks, Abe Lincoln ! huh ! knowed 
him ever sence I was a boy — Abe Lincoln ! he aint no 
great shakes." All the incidents, all the (I almost said) ac- 
cidents; all the circumstances of a man's life are but the 
training school; development in the direction of the evo- 
lution of that life. To the ordinary observer Mr. Lincoln's 
defeat for the office of U. S. Senator meant relegation to 



10 
everlasting political obscurity, but that very defeat^ the in- 
cidents leading up to it first brought him to notice as a great 
public leader outside his own State, and led to his subse- 
quent engagement to speak in this State on the slavery 
question. His great speech at Cooper Institute delivered 
Feb'y 27, 1860, where he took for his text the sentence of 
his great opponent Senator Douglass, "Our fathers when 
they framed the government under which we now live 
understood this question, the slavery question, just as well 
and even better than we do now,'^ was the first knowledge 
that the metropolis had of so great a mind — so fluent an 
orator — so logical a rsasoner — so great a patriot as Abraham 
Lincoln of Illinois. That pure English, that rhetorical 
finish, that magic eloquence so impressed a distinguished 
professor of elecution that he journeyed from town to town 
* to hear him nightly and afterwards advised all his pupils 
to copy this man whose feet, bare, unshod, whose bony arms 
had never any other master in the art of learning the posture 
eloquent or the waving lines of perfect gesticulation than the 
sweeping winds of his prairie home, and waving branches 
of the trees he helped to hew into rails; whose homely face 
and head had never crossed the threshold of any college of 
learning; whose mind was trained by the help of borrowed 
books and tallow dips, but had never the scholastic advan- 
tages and training supposed necessary to make the orator 
the statesman, the successful man. His only teacher had 
been his noble step mother who loved him to his death. 
This man rose in spite of influence rather than with its aid, 
to above the learned scholar of his day, above the scheming 
politician, above the best known statesman, above the most 
influential journalist of his time at once to a position where 
he looked down upon^them all while they up to him; edu- 
cational*advantages had done'much for them, ^/i^?/ needed it 
to make them much;|but nature had [already made Abra- 
ham Lincoln original and great,'and 'nature builds and edu- 
cates better than art. Edward Everett said he would rather 



11 

be the author of Lincohi's Gettysburg speech than to have 
the brightest name in literature. Here it is: 

Lincoln's the best of all. 

St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 

Matiy great speeches were made in different paits of the 
country on Tuesday, but the short addresss delivered by 
Mr. Lincoln at Gettysburg more than 25 years ago will 
probably outlive them all. It was in these words: 

"Fourscore-and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and 
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 
Now we are engaged in a great civil war; testing whether 
that nation, or any nation so conceived and sodedicited, 
can long endure. We are met on a great battlelield of that 
war. We have come to dedicate and portion off" that field 
as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives 
that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and 
proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we 
cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow 
this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to 
to add'or detract.] [^The world will little note, nor long re- 
member what we say here; but it can never forget what 
they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedi- 
cated here to the unfinished work which they who fought 
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us 
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; 
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion 
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of 
devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall 
not have died in vain; that this nation, under God shall 
have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth."— [July 4, 1864. 



at the dedication of tlie cemetery at t^etty^burK, ^Ji*^ P^«^';«^"^^\^i, ,86,, but he 
the dedication of the National Cemetery thrN^^^^^^^ at 

made an autographic copy of ^h^^ff^l^^f^^^ ^f' \^fe e°4or^^ date as to the address 
^r^c!rTee%. s': f^J^^^ ^AbVlhaC ^Un^ol'" "rHistory, by Nicolay ^and 
Hav." 



12 

Mr. Lincoln's anecdotes revealed his quick and accurate 
preception of a real issue; he going at once to the marrow 
of the question, cutting all red tape and dispensing with 
much verbiage did what we call in homely phrase "hit the nail 
squarely on the head." With your kind permission I will 
read a few of them taken from Carpenter's Home Life of 
Lincoln. The value of some of the army generals is plainly 
shown by the following: 

A juvenile Brigadier from New York with a small de- 
tachment of cavalry having imprudently gone within the 
rebel liness near Fairfax Court House was captured by 
guerillas. Upon the fact being reported to Mr. Lincoln, he 
said that he was very sorry to lose the horses. "What do 
you mean," inquired his informant. "Why," rejoined the 
President, "I can make a heiter Brigadier' any day but 
those horses cost the government $125 a head." 

His sense of justice was very strong and sometimes he 
swept aside with a few strokes of his pen a mass ot legal 
technicalities in a comprehensive and amusing summing up. 
During the war Franklin W. Smith was a member of a 
Boston firm which had large dealings with the government. 
Some of his enemies accused him of dishonesty, and he 
was brought before a court-martial. Over 4,000 letters 
were seized, and from these only eight were produced by 
the ])rosecution, and the evidence of this number was of no 
force whatever. The late Vice President Wilson, Senator 
Chailes Sumner and H. L. Dawes, besides the entire Mass- 
achusetts delegation, supported Mr. Smith through his 
trying ordeal, and President Lincoln, moreover, after an 
exhaustive review of the case dissolved the court martial 
and annulled the whole trial. The decision of President 
Lincoln, the original draft of which is now given by Towri 
Topics, in its phraseology will be recognized as chrracter- 
istic of the man while especially flattering to Franklin W. 
Smith. The decision reads: "Whereas, Franklin W. Smith 
had transactions with the navy department to the amount 



13 

of one million and a quarter of dollars; and whereas, he 
had the chance to steal a quarter of a million and was only 
charged with stealing twenty-two hundred dollars, and the 
question is now about his stealing one hundred, / donH he- 
lieve he stole anything at all. Therefore the records and 
findings ai-e disapproved — declared null and void and the 
defendant is discharged." 

It would be difficult, says the New York Tribune, to sum 
up the rights and wrongs of business more briefly than 
that or to find a paragraph more characteristically and un- 
mistakably Mr. Lincoln's. 

A needed lesson was that to some undul}' anxious croak- 
ers — to aid the government by a well ordered silence. At 
the White House one day some gentlemen were present 
from the west, excited and troubled about the comraisi-ions 
and omissions of the Administration. The President heard 
them patiently, and then replied, "Gentlemen, suppose all 
the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put 
it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River 
on a rope, you would not shake the cable or keep shouting 
to him, 'Blondin, sta!id up a little straighter' — 'Go a little 
faster' — 'Lean a little more to the North' — 'Lean a little 
more to the South.' No, you wotild hold your breath as 
well as your tongue and keep your hands otf until he was 
safe over. The Government is carrying an immense 
weight; untold treasures are in their hands; they are doing 
the best they can; don't badger them; keep silence and 
they will get you safe across." And the Government did. 

Just previous to the fall of Vicksburg a self constituted 
committee solicitous for the morals of our armies took it 
upon themselves to visit the President and urge the re- 
moval of Gen. Grant. In some surprise Mr. Lincoln 
inquired for what reason. "Why," replied the spokesman, 
he drinks too much whiskey. "Ah," rejoined Mr. Lincoln 
dropping his lower lip, "By the way, gentlemen, can either 



14 

of you tell ine where Gen. Grant gets his whiskey? Be- 
cause if you can find out I will send every General in the 
lield a barrel of it." 

Mr. Lincoln here again showed what was e%'er his guiding 
aim in life — to do or use anything to save the Union. And 
also his appreciation ot real merit wherever it might be 
found. He had watched Grant and knew his man and no 
tongue of the meddlesome could shake that confidence. 

As to his religious nature, Mr. Arnold, who knew Mr. 
Lincoln very intimately and who was more in sympathy 
with the higher aspirations of his nature, says of him: 

He was by nature religious, full of religious sentiment. 
The veil between him and the supernatural was very thin. 
It is not claimed that he was orthodox. For creeds and 
dogmas he cared little. Ijut on the great fundamental 
principles of religion — of the Christian religion — he was a 
firm believer. Belief in the existence of God, the immor- 
tality of the soul, in the Bible as the revelation of God to 
man, in the efficacy and duty of prayer, in reverence 
toward the Almighty and in love and charity to man was 
the basis of his religion. He was a man of simple trust in 
God, living in the consciousness of the presence of the 
great Creator, and one whose heart vvas ever open to the 
impressions of the unseen world. He was one whom no 
sectarian could claim as a partisan, yet one whom every 
true Christian could claim as a brother. When the un- 
believer shall convince the peoi)le that this man, whose 
whole life was straightforward, clear and honest, was a 
sham and a hypocrite, then, but not before, may ho make 
the world doubt his Christianit}'. 

His sterling honesty was proverbial. Here is a rare 
instance of lawyer honesty. About the time Mr. Lincoln 
began to be known as a successful lawyer he was waited 
upon b}' a lady who held a real estate claiu) which she 
wished him to prosecute, putting into his hands with the 



15 

necessary papers a check for two hundred and fifty dollars 
as a retaining fee. Mr. Lincoln said he would look the 
case over and asked her to call again next day. Upon pre- 
senting herself next day, Mr. Lincoln told her he had gone 
through the papers and he innst tell her frankly that there 
was not a peg to hang her claim upon, and he could not 
conscientiously advise her to bring an action. The lady 
was satisfied and rose to go. "Wait," said Mr. Lincoln, 
fumbling in his vest pocket, "here is the check yon left 
me." "But, Mr, Lincoln, I think you have earned that." 
"No, no," he responded, handing it back to her, "that would 
not be right. I can't take pay for doing my duty." Mr. 
Lincoln liked to ieel himself the attorney of the people 
not their ruler. Speaking once of the |)robability of his 
renomination he said, "If the people think 1 have managed 
their case for them well enough to trust me to carry it up 
to the next term I am sure I shall be glad to take it." 

Attorney-General Bates was once remonstrating with the 
President against the appointment to a judicial position of 
considerable importance of a Western man who though 
once on the bench was of indifierent reputation as a lawyer. 

"Well now, Judge, I think you are rather too hard on . 

Besides that, I must tell you he did me a good turn long 
ago. When I took to the law I was going to court one 
morning with some ten or twelve miles of bad road before 

me when overtook me in his wagon. 'Hallo, Lincoln,' 

said he, 'Going to the court house? Come in and I will 

give you a seat.' Well, I got in and went on reading 

his papers. Presently the wagon struck on one side of the 
road, then it hopped off" on the other. I looked out and 
saw the driver jerking from one side of the seat to the 
other, so I said 'Judge, I think your coachman has been 
taking a drop too much this morning.' 'Well, I declare 
Lincoln,' said he, 'I should not much wonder if you were 
right, for he has nearly upset me half a dozen times since 
starting, so putting his head out of the window he shouted. 



16 

'Why you infernal scoundrel, you are drunk.' Upon 
which ])ullinf^ up his horses, and turnini^ around with great 
gravity the coachman said, 'Bedad, hut that's the first 
rightful decision your honor has given for the last twelve 
months.' " 

niS READY WIT. 

Some gentlemen fresh from a Western tour during a call 
at the White House referred in the course of conversation 
to a body of water in Nebraska which bore an Indian name 
signifying weeping waters. Mr. Lincoln instantly replied, 
"As laughing waters, according to Longfellow, is Minne- 
haha, this evidently should be Minneboohoo." 

Ui)on the betrothal of the Prince of Wales to the 
Princess Alexandra, Queen Victoria sent a letter to each of 
the European sovereigns and also to President Lincoln, 
announcing the fact. Lord Lyons, her ambassador at 
Washington — a bachelor by the way — requested an audi- 
ence of Mr. Lincoln that he might present this important 
document himself. At the time appointed he was received 
at the White House in company with Mr. Seward. "May 
ii please your Excellency," said Lord Lyons, "I hold in my 
hand an autograph letter from my royal mistress Queen 
Victoria, which I have been commanded to present your 
Excellency. In it she informs your Excellency that her 
son. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, is about to 
contract a matrimonial alliance with Her Royal Highness 
the Princess Alexandra of Denmark." After continuing 
in this strain for a few minutes Lord Lyons tendered the 
letter to the President and awaited his reply. It was short, 
simple and expressive, and consisted simply of the words, 
"Lord Lyons, go thou and do likewise." It is not known 
just how Lord Lyons communicated the answer to his 
Royal mistress. Evidently Mr. Lincoln had a keen ap- 
preciation of the value of betrothals to an "old bach." 

Mr. Lincoln had that rare power of putting a whole case 
in a phrase. When notified of his renomination, he 



17 

summec) up the matter by that sentence which has since 
passed into a proverb, "It is not so much me as you thought 
it best not to swap horses crossing a stream." His well 
known clemency to capital offenders was a source of much 
annoyance to army officei's, so that wherever and whenever 
possible these cases were kept from Mr. Lincoln. A 
volume could be filled with stories of these acts of execu- 
tive clemency. When such a case reached him, he gen- 
erally put tiie papers away in a pigeon hole among some 
papers he called his "dead head" list, with the remark, "It 
won't do him any harm to stay under arrest a while longer 
I reckon.-' He had a big merciful heart, and could not 
bear that by hisact any should die. When remonstrated 
with, he would say, "It won't hurt the papers to rest 
a while, while I think it over, and they can't do any thins: 
until I get there." 

On one occasion Lt. Gov. Ford having an appointment 
with the President found a poor girl there who had waited 
two whole days to see the President to attempt to get her 
brother pardoned, who had been sentenced to death for 
desertion. Mr. Ford, sympathizing with the poor girl told 
her to follow him and when he commenced to talk to the 
President to push in between them and insist upon an ex- 
amination of the papers as it was a matter of life and death. 
She did so. Mr. Lincoln was surprised at the apparent for- 
wardnesss of the girl, but observing her distressed condition 
he took her papers, examined them, and glancing from 
them to the face of the petitioner, whose tears had broken 
forth afresh, he studied its expression for a moment, and 
then his eyes fell upon her scanty but neat dress. Instantly 
his face lighted up. "My poor girl," said he, "you have come 
here with no Governor or Senator, or Member of Congress 
to plead your cause. You seem honest and truthful, and," 
with much emphasis, '■'"you donH wear hoops (ladies will 
recall the immense hoojis fashion decreed in those days), 
and I will be whipped, but I will pardon your brother." 



18 
But with all his tenderness he was always the President. 
About the time of General Lee's surrender to Grant, there 
were rumors of peace conferences between the two Gen- 
erals, and there was a good deal of uneasiness about it, and 
Secretary Stanton earnestly urged upon the President his 
duty as Chief Magistrate in the matter. "Stanton, you are 
right," said he. "Let me have a pen." And he sat down 
and wrote as follows: "The President directs me to say to 
you. that he wishes you to have no conference with General 
Lee unless it be for capitulation of Lee's army, or on some 
minor or purely military matter. He instructs me to say, 
that you are not to decide, discuss or confer upon any 
political question. Such questions the President holds in 
his own hands, and will submit them to no military con- 
ference or conventions. In the meantime you are to press 
to the utmost your military advantages." The President 
read over what he had written, and then said, "Now Stan- 
ton, date and sign this paper, and send it to Grant. We'll, 
see about this peace business." 

The Emancipation Proclamation, upon which his fame 
will tjiostly rest with the masses of men, was another in- 
stance of ids calm inward consciousness of power and of 
his right, when the time came to use it. He called his 
Cal)inet together about the last of July or first of August, 
iS62. They had no idea of the purpose, nor did the Presi- 
dent give them. any. He was mentally studying each one, 
and prei)aring for the ordeal before him, that of reading to 
these representative men a draft of a document of the most 
far reaching importance. They were representative men, 
and by its effect upon them he could judge of its effect 
upon the people. As many men of large minds do when 
about to do some important act. He even joked and 
trifled a little, reading a chapter to them out of a book by 
Orpheus C. Kerr, and laughed heartily at its drolleries. 
The members were all dignified men, and began to wonder 



19 
if the President had called them together to joke with their 
dignities. But the President had only been loosing the 
string to bend the bow the harder. His demeanor under- 
went a sudden change. The amused humorist vanished. 
He told them he had prejjared a paper which he wished to 
read to them. That he had not called them together to 
ask their advice, but suggestions would be in order after 
tiiey had heard it read. His purpose was fixed. They 
might give counsel on minor points. This was done, but 
the publishing was delayed until it could be done after 
some decided victory. Mr. Seward^ Mr. Chase, and all the 
Cabinet realized the vital step this was, said Mr. Lincoln 
reverently, "I have promised my God that I will do it." 
Mr. Chase, wdio sat near said, "Did I understand you cor- 
rectly, Mr. President?" Mr. Lincoln replied, "I made a 
solemn vow before God, that if General Lee should be 
driven back from Pennsylvania I would crown the result 
by a declaration of freedom to the slaves." The battle of 
Antietam was fought on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 1862, and 
the Proclamation was issued on Monday, Sept. 22d, 1862. 
It is impossible in an address of this character to give 
space to this paper, so pregnant with great results, suffice 
it to say that free speech, free soil, free men, thus became 
for the first time in our history a real status. In that city, 
God given, and located as the natural metropolis of a great 
Nation, whose sides are flanked by two rivers, arteries of 
commerce, whose front is washed by those great ocean 
pulses, the salt water tides; in one of the squares of that 
city is a monument. A tall figure wrapped in a cloak, a 
benignant but careworn face, a majestic brow with eyes be- 
neath that seem to look kind!}' down upon the crowds that 
surge about the spot; a roll in the hand and underneath 
upon the base are inscribed his immortal words, "With 
malice toward none, with charity for all." The city is New 
York, the square is Union Square, the statue and words 
are Al)raham Lincoln's. Did man ever utter kindlier 



20 
words ? Did disloyalty ever breathe such a benison ? 
Who but ])atriot and what but patriot^heart prompt them? 

President Lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation 
declarinii^ that on Jan. ], 1863, all persons held as slaves in 
any State or part of a State in rel)ellion a<2;ainst the United 
States should be "then, thenceforward and forever free." 

One must go back to the history of that time to under- 
stand the awful pressure brought to i)ear on Lincoln before 
that proclamation was given out. For months the abo- 
litionists had been dinging it into his ears that the war 
would never end victoriously for the Union army till 
slavery was destroyed. On the other side all the eloquence 
of the loyal border States was l^rought to bear on him to 
show him that it he issued this proclamation the Union was 
dead forever, as the border States would instantly go with 
the seceding ones. It was during his months of doubt and 
anxiety over the question that he wrote the letter to Horace 
Greele}' in which occurs the immortal words, "I shall try 
to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall 
adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true 
views." 

Delegations of preachers, north and south, called on him, 
each morally certain that he knew exactly what was right 
One can detect the quiet humor which lurked in the martyr 
President's reply to one such delegation. ''1 am ap- 
proached by the most opposite opinions and advice, and by 
religious men who are certain they represent the divine 
will. I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say that if 
it be probable that God would reveal his will to others on 
a point so connected with my duty it might be supposed he 
would reveal it directly to me." 

At last, however, all doubts in his mind were at rest, and 
he issued the proclamation, the^first draft of which he made 
as early as July. It was the occasion of infinite rejoicing 
among the negroes who understood its purport. To-day 



21 

the best thing their descendants can do is to let politics 
alone and go to making money. Lincoln had hopes of thera 
which have not been fulfilled, or he would not have said ot 
the emancipation proclamation, "If my name ever gets into 
history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it." 

The soldiers loved Mr. Lincoln, and loved him more as 
they knew him better. lie was their friend. Many a 
mother's heart was made liappy be the pardon of her soldier 
boy who perhaps worn out with fatigue had slept on his 
post when he ought to have been awake and watching. 
That pardon, signed by the homely rail splitter's hand 
usually read as follows: "The findings herein are annulled. 
This man must be discharged from arrest and sent back to 
duty. A. Lincoln." 

Do none of you know what it has meant to walk under 
the burden of an overhanging calamity, from which as the 
days went on, think and pray and plan as you would, there 
seemed absolutely no way of escape, to feel that the blow 
had alreadyj'allen; that all your efforts were utter and ab- 
solute failures, and when you had well nigh despaired, to 
have the whole load lifted, the expected calamity turned 
into a blessing, and a time of great rejoicing ? To such of 
you then as have had that experience does the appreciation 
of the very resurrection and the life conveyed in the words 
not onl}' to the condemned, but to his loved ones. 

A story is told that when Mr. Lincoln was renominated, 
and the election drew near, tliat the boys in the field were 
going to have a chance to vote too. The issue before the 
people then was: Was the war for the Union a failure ? 
Should it be stopped and peace had on any terms? The 
party nominating Mr. Lincoln said "No, the war for the 
Union must go on until that fiag floats unmolested over all 
our broad land." The opposing party said "Yes (and they 
honestly believed it) the war is a failure, and peace must be 
liad at any terms and at once,'' So the issue was joined 



22 

and the Ides of November came on. In the prison pen at 
Andersonville, were i^alhmt Union soldiers starving to 
death. Vermin and dead lines, filth and disease, hunger 
suffering and death were their daily lots. No eye seemed 
to pity, no arm to save. The mothers, the sisters, the wives 
and the sweethearts of some of those men looked like Sis- 
era's mother long out at a window, and cried through a 
lattice "Why is he eo long in coming?" But no answer 
came to the cry. He was captured and taken to Ander- 
sonville was all they knew. These soldiers heard of the 
issue. They determined to have an election too. No ballot 
box or election machinery, was at hand for them. They 
knew if Mr. Lincoln was elected it meant war and if war 
no exchange for them. If his opponent, peace by surrender 
of all the nation held dear. So they held an election, and 
the story goes,'they got an old black coffee pot for a ballot 
box, used black and white beans for ballots. Black to 
designate Mr. Lincoln, white to designate his opponent, 
and so they voted. All day long while the nation was 
voting at home, these prisoners at Andersonville voted. 
Some of them crawled there. Some of them walked there. 
Some of them were carried there by stronger arms, and de- 
posited that ballot in the old coffee pot with skeleton hands 
and arms and panting breath, and tottering steps, thus did 
this noble, heioic band. To the Vermont boy a vote for 
Lincoln meant no more sight of the old green hills of Ver- 
mont. -i; To the^New'York boy no longer hope for embrace 
of wife and kiss of children. To the Western boy his 
prairie].Jiome, at the meeting about the board that next 
Thanksgiving Day, it meant a continued vacant chair. To 
all itjneant G>^d only knew for how long, the continued 
verinin,' filth, rags, hunger, exposure, starvation and deatii, 
and war. On the other hand a vote against him meant ex- 
change, freedom, release and peace. How did they vote? 

When that fateful November day had ended, it is said 
they opened the old black coffee pot and found it full of 



23 

black beans. These martyrs had niianiniously reelected 
Mr. Lincoln, and decided, so far as they conld, that come 
what might to them, the Union must and should be pre- 
served.* 

Mr. President, that ,', was a grand scene for us of 
this later day. Do you know, sir, it makes one think of 
the Roman Gladiators, who as they came out to Ught in 
the arena were accustomed as they drew their swords pre- 
paratory to the fight to bow in stately fashion, to the then 
Cassar, and address him, ^'■Ave Iniperator morituri salut- . 
ant.''^ "Augustus Emperor, Hail! We about to die salute 
thee." It seems to me those brave soldiers, those Ander- 
son ville martyrs, said by that unselfish act, "Hail, Lincoln ! 
Hail, thou starry flag ! Hail, our country ! We about to 
die salute thee." Let us wail tor them the soldier's requiem: 

How sleep the brave who sink to rest. 
By all their Country's wishes blest? 
When Spring with dewy fingers cold, 
Returns to deck their hallowed mould, 
She there shall dress a sweeter sod, 
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. 
By fairy hands their knell is rung. 
By forms unseen their dirge is sung; 
There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, 
To bless the turf that wraps their clay, 
And Freedom shall a while repair, 
To dwell a weeping hermit there. 

It was once my good fortune to sail down the Potomac to 
Mt. Vernon where rest the remains of George Washington. 
As we neared the landing, mingled with the rush of water 
thrown back by the paddle wheels of the steamer mingled 
with the talk of the passengers came the tolling of the boat bell 



♦This incident seems historically correct. At one time, delivering this ad- 
dress before a great audience, when I reached this point, the G. A. R. Post 
present rose to a man with the audience and saluted "Old *Glory" then and 
there. At the conclusion of the exercises two old soldiers came ovit of the 
audience and each taking me by the hand said, "We were there tliat day — 
every word of the story is true." 



24 
whose measured funeral strokes echoed from hill and shore; 
the passengers ceased their gayety; tlie steamer went half 
speed; the flags were put at half mast, as the bell continued 
to toll the requiem of the great dead, whose resting place 
we were i'ast approaching. It was a solemn scene; the pro- 
cession of mourners from every nation under the sun wind- 
ing up the hill and going to the tomb of the father of his 
country, that Mecca of all American tourists. Flowers 
were blooming and birds were singing over his tomb; relics 
of his life and death passed in review before as; and among 
that assemblage there were but those who did him rever- 
ence. As I stood before that tomb with uncovered head, I 
thought, "with thine, oh, great Wasliington, among the 
names not born to die, shall Lincoln's stand, primus inter 
jparesP 

Like many others afterwards famous, he was born in ob-' 
scurity, struggled and lived in poverty, until all at once in 
the Providence ot God by the progress of events which no 
man could forsee, he came upon the political horizon like a 
flaming star in an August night. All political telescopes 
were leveled at this star so suddenly arisen in the West. 
His great physique; his rugged honesty; his eloquence; his 
humanity; his broad and comprehensive intellect, were an 
unknown quantity to the American people then and were 
now perforce to be ascertained. What would they prove 
to be? 

Amazed and astonished at the action of the political con- 
vention in 1860, which selected Abraham Lincoln as its 
standard bearer the American people were everywhere cry- 
inir out "Who is Abraham Lincoln ? Where does he live ? 
What does he do ? We never heard ot him before." And 
some politician answered: "Oh, he is a lawyer in Illinois. 
Don't you remember he had a discussion with Stephen A. 
Douglass on the slavery question and was defeated by him 
for U. S. Senator." How purile, how childish in the light 
of his subse(iuent fame do all these inquiries seem now. 



25 

Some of 3'ou older men standing there voted for him. 
Some of you for his opponents but you all claim him now 
as your Mr. Lincoln, and from that moment in the womb 
of that time was born the man with whom fate was big 
with results to the American people. And that man who 
then was so little known held in his hand for years the 
destinies of this great nation and became the Emancipator 
of a race, and his statues now adorn almost every city in 
the land. An artist in a picture of his death-bed scene, 
allegorically represents the angels of God hovering over 
him with heavenly songs, and the immortal Washington 
holding his head and placing upon his brow the laurel 
wreath of eternal fame. This man so unknown, so belittled, 
so misunderstood; this man was an American above all 
Americans. He declared in the midst of that mighty 
struggle, when the nation both north and south was pour- 
ing out treasure and blood; when citizens were in arms on the 
battle fields, and in the hospitals or starving in prison pens 
of Andersonville and Salisbury; when the cry of millions 
lifting their shackled hands to Heaven were praying to 
God for freedom; this man's one idea was to save the 
Union, sajang, "If I could save the Union with slavery, I 
would; if I could save the Union without slavery, I would," 
expressed in those simple words the whole end and aim of 
that great war we were then waging. 

Judge Tourgee eloquently and justly writes of Mr. 
Lincoln as follows: 

"It has become the fashion in these later days to look 
upon Lincoln as the accident of an accident rather than as 
the man of the age. The greatest of all who have borne 
the name of American. Little souls who came near his 
great life, who viewed his nature as the insect scans the 
bark of the oak along the rugate, upon which he creeps 
with a self satisfied contempt for the rude strength and 
solid core that lies within — have been winning for them- 
selves a sort of immortality, and an infinitude of contempt 



26 

by trying to paint the man whose perfections they could 
never apprehend. Onr literature has been overrun with a 
horde of deliverers made purblind by the glory of a life 
' whose light was so serene and steady that they counted it 
but a reflection of the lurid conflict amid which he lived. 
It was not because one man schenied, or another faltered 
that Abraham Lincoln came to the leadership of the hosts 
of freedom. Neither was it through the merit of any or of 
all his advisers that he succeeded in accomplishing the task 
set before him but chiefly through his own consummate 
genius and unmatched power. It was not luck but intel- 
lect that brought him from obscurity, to the forefront of 
the greatest movement in history; the men who stood be- 
side him were pigmies in practical power compared with 
him. He was so great that he needed no padding and was 
careless of his fame. As he came from tlie people so he 
left himself fearlessly in their hands. It has been custom- 
ary while admitting his prudence and sagacity and self- 
control to depreciate his intellectual power. The change 
of position which he effected by a single phrase was so 
easily done and seemed so, even when once put forth, that 
few have stopped to think that the intellect of Sumner, the 
prophetic grasp of Seward, the foresight of Chase and the 
brain of a thousand others, who seemed his compeers — had 
been hitherto utterly unable to formulate a common ground 
of opposition to slavery which should commend itself to the 
mind and conscience of the people. He alone, of all the 
men of that time had the sagacity to discover the key of 
the position, to unite all the discordant elements in the at- 
tack upon it, and to hold them up to the conflict until the 
victory was won. By that thought he pushed all the dis- 
cordant elements into one. It was one of those strokes of 
power which mark the highest genius. By this alone he 
would have established his claim to rank as much above 
his associates in intellect, as he is admitted to have stood in 
sagacity, devotion and self forgetfulness. Standing on a 



27 
level with the lowliest he towered conspicuously above the 
greatest. Those who saw the apparent ease with which he 
achieved these results only half realized his greatness. 
Their regard was dissipated by a thousand insignificant 
details. Only the future can properly estimate the brain 
that consolidated the opposition to slavery — held the nation 
to the work of putting down the rebellion and called his 
cabinet together only to consider the wording of a procla- 
mation that was to change the status of a race forever. 
He bestrode our land like a collossus all unconscious of 
his own power, frankly esteeming others at their just value 
— incapable of detraction or envy — and trusting his fame 
with a magnificent unconcern as to the result to the future; 
pure, simple, unassuming, kindly ; touched with sadness 
and relieved with mirth, but never stained with falsehood 
or treachery or any hint of shameful act; his heart as tender 
as his life was grand; he stands in history, a little child in 
his humility, a saint in purity, a king in power. Offspring 
of the sadly smitten South; nurseling of the favored North; 
giant of the great West, his life was the richest fruitage of 
the liberty he loved. His name is the topmost which a 
continent has given unto fame." 

Mr. Lincoln was pre eminently and is to-day in the his- 
tory of his country, the representative of its idea of free 
thought, free speech, free soil and free men. People some- 
times deprecate the existence of political parties, but the 
idea is founded on a misconception of the mission of 
parties. Show me a country where there is but one politi- 
cal party and I will show you a country under the rule of 
grinding tyranny. The very existence of a political party 
opposed to the party which introduced Mr. Lincoln to pub- 
lic notice made it possible for him by combating their ideas 
to attain the position which he occupied in his lifetime and 
now occupies in history. It is said, sir, in an old proverb 
that "dead men tell no tales." That, sir, is a fool's fallacy. 
Dead men do tell tales. "He being dead yetspeaketh" is as 



28 
true to-day of that statesman as the day in which it was 
written of him who spake as never man spake. Men are 
loath to learn new lessons, communities are hard to change 
from their old ways, so with nations; and therefore, when 
the experiment of Republican form of government was 
tried the other nations of the earth looked on and said, 
"We will wait and see what becomes of this. They have 
waited and seen — what ? That country recovered from the 
shock of civil war; the industrial energies of our 63,000,000 
of people accumulate in force and wisdom; the thousands 
of soldiers throw down their swords and take up plow share 
and pruning hook; forge fires are on every hillside and the 
smoke Irom countless chimneys trail across the continent 
and cloud the skies from newborn manufacturies ; the 
sounds of the humming of thousands of wheels of industry 
and commerce fill the air; economic problems grasped and 
solved; cities and towns spring up like magic, and South- 
ward as well as Westward the course of empire has 
taken its way, and today the 25,000,000 he ruled over so 
wisely and so well, have increased to 63,000,000. Free 
State upon free State has been added to that starry flag 
and the sunny South no longer refusing her allegiance to 
the laws of the land partakes more than all else of the 
benefits of a united country, a common flag, the abolition 
of slavery, a sound financial currency system, for one 
people, one land, one great free commonwealth whose 
foundations were built upon the solid rocks of equity, lib- 
erty and justice — the blood of whose martyrs like those of 
old — the seed of the church, was the liberty seed from 
which has sprung the fair blooming plant of our country's 
freedom of to-day. Among all those martyrs, first in 
memory and best beloved of all, is and forever will be 
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President — the first Martyred 
President of the United States. 



LE S '12 



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